The California Gold Rush Mining Towns collection contains 373 photographs taken between 1930 and 1968 by Alma Lavenson. The
collection consists of views of several of the towns and camps of the Mother Lode region --the area located roughly between
Georgetown and Mariposa --which was heavily mined for its great quantities of gold-bearing quartz. Approximately 60 communities
which originally developed during the Gold Rush period following 1848 are represented in the collection. Many of these communities
were apparently nearly-abandoned by the time of Lavenson's visits. The towns range from more well-known areas such as Nevada
City, Grass Valley, Columbia, North San Juan and Coloma, to smaller, more obscure areas such as Rough and Ready, Copperopolis,
Goodyear's Bar, Fiddletown and Timbuctoo. Especially featured in the collection are Gold-Rush-era structures such as hotels,
residences, stores, restaurants, banks, churches, post offices, and jails, as well as cemeteries, farms and mining developments.
Many street scenes feature storefront architecture remaining from the Gold Rush period.

Background

Alma Lavenson was born in San Francisco in 1897, the daughter of a successful dry-goods businessman. After the devastating
earthquake and fire of 1906, the Lavenson family moved across the Bay to Oakland. At some point before she entered the University
of California at Berkeley, where she would study psychology, Alma Lavenson began to practice photography with a small, folding
Kodak camera, which she initially used for snapshots of family and friends. After several years of self-directed study in
the pictorialist tradition, her Zion Canyon photograph "The Light Beyond" --the first she had ever submitted for publication
--was chosen to appear on the cover of the December 1927 issue of Photo-Era magazine. Similar successes were soon to follow, all acknowledging her formalist approach to landscapes and occasional genre
portraits and architectural subjects. Around 1929 Lavenson began to incorporate industrial and urban subjects into her work,
exploring the abstract shapes and patterns suggested in their surfaces.

Extent

373 photographic prints, 21 x 26 cm. or smaller.
367 digital objects

Restrictions

Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish photographs must be submitted
in writing to the Curator of Pictorial Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library
as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must
also be obtained by the reader.